QUANTUM LEAP: The welcome rise of patient power

The Supreme Court judgement in the Anuradha Saha medical negligence case is historic for several reasons, and not just for the quantum of compensation awarded.

The biggest achievement of this 15-year-long litigation is that it has given birth to patients' rights movement in India.

Dr Kunal Saha, US-based husband of Anuradha, deserves credit for turning a deeply personal tragedy into a public cause which had no champions till now.

Saha did not sit silent when his wife became a victim of medical negligence at the hands of Kolkata doctors. He decided to fight it out and in the process, he exposed the dirty side of not just top doctors and hospitals but also medical councils, politicians who shield negligent doctors, health administrators, doctors' associations, consumer courts and the judicial system.

Dr Kunal Saha (above left) has won a record Indian medical negligence payout, but his victory for patient power hadn't stopped disgraced doctors like Ketan Desai (right) staying in the MCI.

He even took on the global body of doctors – the World Medical Association (WMA).

The first point of contact in any case of alleged or suspected medical negligence is the medical council – a self-regulatory forum of doctors at the state and national level. When Saha began his fight, he realised that medical councils either did not exist in many states or were dysfunctional in states where they existed.

At the national level, Medical Council of India (MCI) did exist, but was in the grip of a corrupt mafia. As a result of a public interest litigation filed by Saha, most states today have functional state medical councils. But this is only half the battle won.

Medical councils are run by doctors themselves, and no doctor is willing to testify another doctor as negligent. This is what the West Bengal Medical Council did – an act for which 17 ex-members of the council are facing criminal charges now.

The Gujarat Medical Council (GMC) is another black sheep, consistently shielding disgraced ex-MCI chief Ketan Desai. Even after MCI decided to cancel Desai's license, GMC has continued to keep him on the roll. As a result of this, Desai has got back into MCI.

Elsewhere, non-doctors like patients and social workers are mandatorily made members of medical councils. They are known as 'lay members' and sometimes one of them may even head the medical council, as was the case with UK's General Medical Council a few years ago.

Saha also exposed unholy links between medical councils and political patronage, including central and state health ministries. The appointment of one of the doctors convicted for negligence in the Anuradha Saha case as chief medical advisor by the Mamta Banerjee government illustrates this nexus between negligent and corrupt doctors and politicians.

The reinstatement of Ketan Desai in a government job in Gujarat while he is facing trial is another example.

The state government in Delhi has consistently ignored charges of conflict of interest in members of the Delhi Medical Council.

This rot in medical regulation, however, does not mean that we don't have honest and caring doctors. They perhaps form the silent majority. It is time they speak up and restore public trust in the medical profession.

Saving the rhino

Growing demand for rhino horns in China and Vietnam is threatening the Asian rhino in India and the region.

Rhino horns are illegally traded for their alleged medicinal properties. Of late, wildlife traffickers are also promoting rhino horns for some non-traditional uses like cancer treatment and for curing hangovers.

Compared to 25,000 rhinos in Africa, there are just 3,500 Asian rhinos left with the bulk of them being Greater One-horned Rhinos found in Assam and West Bengal.

Facing extinction: Demand for rhino horns in China and Vietnam is threatening the Asian rhino in India

Sumatran and Javan rhinos are critically endangered. Pressures due to illegal poaching, hunting and demand for horns have been identified as major threats.

Taking note of the critical situation facing the Asian Rhinos, five countries – India, Nepal, Bhutan, Indonesia and Malaysia – have decided to make concerted efforts to save the species from extinction.

The first Asian Rhino States Meeting held in Indonesia recently adopted the Bandar Lampung Declaration, which calls for steps to increase three Asian rhino species by at least three per cent annually by 2020.

Some success has been seen in Nepal, where just one animal has been poached in the past 20 months, while India has launched a new conservation programme.

Emergency plans have been mooted for conservation of Javan and Sumatran rhinos as just a handful of them are now left in the wild.

3-D breast imaging tool to detect cancer early

A team of researchers from the University of Twente, Netherlands have developed a prototype of a new imaging tool that may help detect breast cancer early.

The new device, called a photoacoustic mammoscope, uses a combination of infrared light and ultrasound to create a 3-D map of the breast, instead of X-rays used in traditional mammography.

A small clinical trial has shown that an earlier version of the technology could successfully image breast cancer in women. The device has been described in a paper published in the journal, Biomedical Optics Express.

It's not Mangalyaan

As the Indian Space Research Organistaion (ISRO) prepares for the crucial launch of its mission to the Red planet early next week, its name has aroused some curiosity. The mission has been officially dubbed the Mars Orbiter Mission, but some enthusiastic souls in media are referring it as Mangalyaan on the lines of Chandrayaan, the lunar mission.

The space agency, however, has clarified that the mission has not been given any specific name, and will go by its scientific tag of being an orbiter mission to Mars.

"Chandrayaan was named based on a selection made from a list of names. There was no such exercise this time", the spokesperson said.

The Indian Space Research
Organistaion's mission to the Red planet has been unofficially
dubbed Mangalyaan, on the lines of Chandrayaan, the lunar mission

In fact, the lunar mission's name was selected by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who had formally announced the mission in his 2003 Independence Day address.

In Sanskrit, the term 'Chandrayaan' means Lunar Craft or Moon Vehicle. The original name suggested by the space agency was 'Somayan', derived from 'Soma' – a synonym of moon in Sanskrit. But when the file for the moon mission went to Vajpayee, he changed it to Chandrayaan.

The Mars mission too was formally announced from the Red Fort by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his speech.

ISRO does not have a naming policy for its missions. Only early experimental satellites were named after astronomers Aryabahatta and Bhaskara. All operational satellites bear functional names such as the Indian National Satellite (INSAT), Resourcesat, Edusat etc.

The only exception was Kalpana-1, a met satellite named after first India-born woman astronaut, Kalpana Chawla.